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Rosary edges Kaneland in OT
Updated: May 21, 2011 9:34PM
Rosary forward Taylor Gibson was elated and ecstatic. Kaneland senior Emily Heimerdinger was exhausted and emotional.
With just under five minutes remaining in the second overtime of Saturday’s 2A Regional soccer final at Rosary, Gibson’s header off Kaitlin Johnson’s corner kick was the golden goal, giving the Royals a 2-1 victory and ending Heimerdinger’s stellar high school career.
“Our crosses were so good all day,” Gibson said. “It was a perfect ball and as soon as she sent I thought ‘Oh my gosh, I know this is going to go in.’”
The two teams had been tied since the 21st minute with neither finding sufficient chances to attack in what became a very physical midfield game.
Rosary (10-10-3), which scored the game’s first goal in the 18th minute when Sam Duarte pulled a Johnson corner out of the air with her full swing of her right foot, felt the best chance to score again would definitely come off a set piece.
“It had to,” Rosary coach Kevin Callaghan said. “We were starting to get tired, both teams. It’s something we’d been working on the last few days since the end of the regular season. I knew if we kept on working on it, sooner or later it would come full circle for us.”
Duarte just missed a header on the second of three consecutive corners before Gibson’s right side run lifted Rosary to its fourth straight regional title.
“It was a beautiful play,” Callaghan said. “I guess after three tries something is going to have to happen, right? It was a beautiful play, a hustling play. For both teams, the way they hustled going in to overtime that’s what it took, another hustling play. And whoever had a little more gas in the tank happened to win it. They could have just as easily done it to us.”
The Knights (12-9-3) responded to Rosary’s first goal when Kate Taylor took an innocent-looking high lob into the box and headed it into the right netting for the equalizer.
Then the game tightened even more.
Heimerdinger, who entered the game just four goals shy of the school record after a four-goal game in the regional semifinal, was marked at every opportunity by Brittney Hutchinson, while Courtney Bila waited 20 yards back just in case she got loose.
In overtime, Heimerdinger was moved from midfield to a wing to try to create a scoring opportunity, but it never came.
“It’s tough to say goodbye to them, especially when you figure that three of them have been starters for four years,” Kaneland coach Scott Parillo said about his seniors. “And what do you say about Emily? Other than the fact that she’s just devastated right now.”
Rosary will now square off with Rochelle Regional winner Freeport, an upset winner over Sycamore, on Tuesday in the Burlington Central Sectional.
“This was our title,” Gibson said. “All the practice we’d done-- we knew we could finish this game and prevail. Even after 20 extra minutes and we were exhausted and we’d already given it our all during regular time, we knew it was ours and we were going to bring it back.”
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